Well, this feels weird. I had no idea when I wrote that last post that it would be the left up there for four months. I guess I was just burned out. I’ve written next to nothing on the family blog either, but I couldn’t abandon it like I did this one, thanks to the good-intentioned nagging I kept getting.

Not much has happened in the last four months, but I guess I’ll highlight the big stuff.

–Scooter no longer lives up to his name; he walks everywhere.

–We bought new living room furniture–yesterday, in fact. We also sold our old stuff on craigslist yesterday, so we are without living room furniture until they deliver our new stuff on Thursday. Nothing like camping out in your own living room.

–My baby sister is finally pregnant with her first baby, and they just moved to Connecticut for a year for her husband to have an internship at Yale. They decided to wait five years after getting married before trying for kids, and she got the positive pregnancy test about three weeks after their fifth anniversary. How’s that for timing?

–My little brother’s second baby girl was born on July 4th. It really wasn’t as exciting as I thought it would be to get the news she was born. I guess with them being all the way across the country from us, I just feel kind of detached from them right now.

–We just got back from a week-long vacation, followed almost immediately by an impromptu visit from the in-laws. Nothing terribly exciting happened in either visit, though. I won’t bore you with all the details.

And honestly, that’s all I can think about that’s worth mentioning. I won’t promise to be a better blogger or not to disappear for months like that again–because quite frankly, I highly suspect blogging will not be a regular thing for me again any time soon. I’m in a place where I don’t want to feel like I have to blog and ramble about nothing important (or worse yet, something I will be embarrassed to read later on), but I want somewhere to turn when I feel like I need to say something. That’s the only reason I never officially closed down the blog.

So dear readers, if any of you are left, check back from time to time (or keep me in your readers), but don’t wait obsessively for me to write daily about something compelling (like I know you must have done before). And I’ve also been sucking at e-mail lately, but if you want to talk to me for whatever reason, that’s the best way to do so. I promise I will get back to you–eventually.

My parents get here this evening. We’re keeping the boys up late to go to the airport with us to pick them up. I think they’ll both be super excited, especially because PJ has been asking to see them every day all week, as though he senses they’re coming already. It will be fun for both my parents to see how much they’ve grown just since Christmas, especially PJ.

I spent most of the day yesterday cleaning in preparation for them to get here. I wonder if maybe it wouldn’t be such a big deal if I made more of an effort to keep up with the housework in between visits from the parents. Still, I’m pretty proud of the way the house looks right now. I’m left with just vacuuming today and cleaning up the clutter from the boys right before we leave. Totally doable.

In the process of cleaning yesterday, though, I managed to bump my knee in the exact same place where I hit my toe the other day. It’s nothing more than a minor bruise, but I feel really silly for being so klutzy that I managed to hurt myself on the same corner of the same bed twice in under a week. I was already wearing shoes while in the room to avoid stubbing my toe again, but it seems I need knee pads too. I’m going to have to warn my parents to be super careful in that room, although I suspect it’s more me than the room.

We’ve been considering other rooming options, though, like putting PJ in that room, his own big boy room. We’ve been looking into whether it’s possible to PJ-proof it (much more comprehensive than baby-proofing) and move him into that big boy bed. The reasoning is that we could get Scooter out of our bedroom once and for all. He still naps in our room anytime PJ needs to nap in his own room because they just keep each other up if they “nap” at the same time. I don’t want to have to separate them, but they’re a little happier when they’ve had their naps. We’ll see. I’d rather if we did move PJ that he didn’t sleep in that girly, dangerous bed (dangerous to me anyway). Eventually we can convert one or both of their beds into true “big boy” beds and move one into that other room and get rid of the girly bed, but I wouldn’t want to do any converting until I was sure PJ was going to be fine in a normal bed in a normal room first.

Anyway, on a topic that actually matters…I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to blog. I’m getting more and more concerned with how public this blog is and how meaningless and petty most of my ramblings are. To those of you I count as friends, you typically get me and ignore me when I’m being immature or just venting, or can even manage to be supporting when I probably get annoying. But I know you guys aren’t the only ones who read, and I’m getting tired of putting the worst me out publicly, opening myself up to criticism to all sorts of mean, cruel people. Fortunately that hasn’t happened lately, but it has happened in the past, and I’m feel particularly vulnerable to that right now. That’s why most of my more recent posts have been pretty pointless.

I’m looking into other options for continuing to blog, and I’m just not quite sure a super-exclusive invitation-only private blogger blog is worth it to me. And right now, that’s about the only option I want to consider. We’ll see how I feel about it after the weekend, as I’m quite sure I won’t be blogging over the weekend. I promise that if I decide to stop blogging altogether, I will at least post something saying so, and I will still be available to all of you through e-mail.

I hope you will all forgive me for my sporadic posting here lately. I’ve completely lost my blogging mojo and can’t seem to find it again. My other blog is even more abandoned than this one has been. I’m sure the people I don’t talk to regularly think we all died over Thanksgiving break.

There’s nothing going on that would prevent me from blogging, just apathy. On the other hand, there is also nothing going on that is worthy of talking about (not that that has usually kept me from blogging in the past…).

I could blame it on the weather; dreary, warm days alternating with cold, windy days put me in a particularly lazy mood. I could blame it on that time of year, with all the Christmas busy-ness distracting me from my more normal routine. But the truth is that I’ve just stopped obsessing over blogs–mine and yours, I’m sorry to say–like I used to.

I’m sure I’ll find that blogging mojo again at some point, but please don’t worry if you don’t see me around as much. I’ll definitely be back if/when there’s something important enough to mention.

I did it. The old Afterthoughts is gone. It was remarkably easy, a little too easy even to erase all that recorded history. Anyway, I have yet to see whether it accomplished my main purpose, but I have no reason to believe it didn’t.

In other news, my baby is one today. Excuse me while I go cry. And make cupcakes and wrap presents (cause I’m on the ball like that). I could and probably should write an emotional post about how I can’t possibly handle being the mother to two toddlers and how my baby is all growned up and my reluctance to wean and how all of a sudden I want another (ok, not that sudden). But those posts will wait for another day. I have enough scheduled into this day already. Besides, the summaries kind of speak for themselves, don’t they?

Ooh, oh yeah, one thing before I go bake cake. BabyN isn’t a baby. I NEED a new name for him. I’ve asked for suggestions several times already and have gotten squat. My creative juices are non-existent right now, so I need help. Ideas? Please?

I think I’m finally going to do it…I’m going to delete the old blog, the one hosted by blogspot. I know most of you didn’t even know it was still there, but a few of you make it here that way (so my stats page tells me) so I thought I would give you fair warning so you can fix your blogrolls before it’s gone altogether.

So I guess Sunday will be the day. That’s two full days, which should be plenty. By the end of the day Sunday, the blogspot address will no longer exist.

Why, you ask? For one, it’s pointless to stay there. I transferred all the old posts here when I started this blog, so it’s not like I want to keep it to remember all those early posts. Also, I’m considering using PicasaWeb as my new flickr-like picture sharing site because of how easy it is to get pictures from Picasa online, since I use Picasa anyway. But my PicasaWeb site automatically includes pictures from my blogger blogs. It seems that is the site that hosts the photos. If I share that page with family, they will be able to see pictures from ALL my blogger blogs. Yup, even the old Afterthoughts.

So if I want the site to be shareable with family, Afterthoughts at blogger needs to go. Of course, I’m only going by theory that deleting the blog will delete that album from my page. It’s the only way I can find to get rid of it, so I’m going to try it. Like I said, it’s not serving any purpose by taking up its little corner of space on the web.

So Sunday it is. Fix those blogrolls now if you’ve been as lazy about that as I have been about cleaning up behind myself.

It’s been a long week, although a good one. We got home Friday afternoon, and my mom left yesterday evening. As usual after a massive change in his routine, PJ is out of control while he readjusts to the old routine. It’s safe to say I am beyond exhaustion. Between chasing PJ around his grandparents’ house, which is full of breakables and antiques, and then chasing him around here and not getting enough sleep any one night since my mom got here, I’m in dire need of some time to recuperate.

For the next few days, it’s likely I’ll still be scarce around here as I attempt to catch up on some sleep and keep one overactive toddler out of trouble. Hopefully I’ll at least be able to find some time to catch up on all of your blogs, though. So until then…

Sorry I’ve been a bit absent for the past few days. As I mentioned a few posts ago, my mom came into town yesterday. Tomorrow we head back to her place for the week, while M is gone for work. I suspect I will continue to be scarce until life gets back to normal late next Saturday or early Sunday. Nobody have anything too exciting happen in your lives until I’m back, ok?